Visualization-based analysis of quality for large-scale software systems

We propose an approach for complex software analysis based on visualization. Our work is motivated by the fact that in spite of years of research and practice, software development and maintenance are still time and resource consuming, and high-risk activities. The most important reason in our opinion is the complexity of many phenomena related to software, such as its evolution and its reliability. In fact, there is very little theory explaining them. Today, we have a unique opportunity to empirically study these phenomena, thanks to large sets of software data available through open-source programs and open repositories. Automatic analysis techniques, such as statistics and machine learning, are usually limited when studying phenomena with unknown or poorlyunderstood influence factors. We claim that hybrid techniques that combine automatic analysis with human expertise through visualization are excellent alternatives to them. In this paper, we propose a visualization framework that...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: KBSE
• Authors: Guillaume Langelier, Houari A. Sahraoui, Pierre Poulin
• Keywords: Automatic Analysis, Complex Software Analysis, KBSE 2005, Software, Software Engineering